My parents appeared torn, afraid to display disharmony, and Prachi glared, seeming to feel she couldn’t tag along since it had been my brilliant escape plan. And so they left. I packed up Anita’s mother’s Toyota with her, and answered her questions about debate, back in a Neil-and-adult script that excised me from the situation and concerned itself only with the exoskeleton of a human, teenage boy. When that had run out, silence filled the car and I watched the suburbs flail by—in the distance, the flank of I-285, that perimeter, and somewhere beyond, a city. From here, all I could discern were the churn of asphalt and concrete, a single white cross piercing the sky, and the flash of a few green highway signs.

At the Dayals’, I hauled in the leftovers the Bhatts had told Anita’s mother to take back for herself. The house was silent. “Anita sleeping?” I asked, and her mother said she must be. I went back to the car to grab the last bags, a couple of grainy cloth totes in the front passenger’s seat. Anjali Auntie arrived before me, brushing past so quickly I startled.

“I’ve got those. Thanks, Neil,” she said brusquely, reaching out to hoist them onto her shoulder. She stood in her driveway, watching me expectantly, framed by their house—mustard yellow with a red roof, comical in our neighborhood of brown bricks and gray stucco.

I’d made it home when I realized I didn’t have my Swiss Army knife on me. I’d taken it out while loading the trays into the Dayals’ refrigerator, because the Saran-wrapped dish of dhokla needed separating into two containers. I’d slashed the plastic open and put the knife—and the key chain it was attached to—on the counter. I had been distracted, wondering if Anita could hear me in her kitchen.

I crossed the cul-de-sac again and knocked. The red door was framed by a few petal-shaped pieces of glass, as though the door were the pistil and the rest of the house the flower’s bloom. I didn’t see any light filtering through. But they couldn’t have departed so quickly. I knocked again, louder; no answer. I padded behind the out-of-bloom azalea bush, lifted the red watering can, and retrieved the spare key. In the foyer, I didn’t remove my shoes, only kicked any spare summer dust from their soles against the doorframe.

“Just gonna get my knife,” I said to no one. Anita’s house opened wide in either direction: to the left, her mother’s room, and a living room filled with formal stuffed chairs. To the right, a dining room with a long wooden table and a mahogany cabinet stocking china. Farther along, the lived-in parts of the place: the kitchen, a den with a plaid sofa and an unobtrusive television.